"Layering high-latitude field recordings of the border between sea ice and the open sea into one found sound composition, this is an elegant work with a lot of fascinating detail. While there’s underwater seal and whale sounds (mostly faint), it’s never in danger of becoming a relaxation cliché, mainly thanks to the crisp and almost electronica-like noises of the ice itself, which are gentle but still slightly alienating, and which ebb alternatively with windier, quite barren sounds." – Chain DLK (USA)
Sonic Acts commission Spring Bloom in the Marginal Ice Zone by Jana Winderen has been released by label Touch. This Sonic Acts and Dark Ecology commission was first shown as a seven channel installation at Muziekgebouw aan't IJ during Sonic Acts Festival 2017.
The marginal ice zone is the dynamic border between the open sea and the sea ice, which is ecologically extremely vulnerable. The phytoplankton present in the sea produces half of the oxygen on the planet. During spring, this zone is the most important CO2 sink in our biosphere. In Spring Bloom in the Marginal Ice Zone the sounds of the living creatures become a voice in the current political debate concerning the official definition of the location of the ice edge. The listener experiences the bloom of plankton, the shifting and crackling sea ice in the Barents Sea around Spitsbergen, towards the North Pole, and the underwater sounds made by bearded seals, migrating species such as humpbacks and orcas, and the sound made by hunting saithe, crustaceans and spawning cod, all depending on the spring bloom.
The three track CD, which includes an interview with Carlos Duarte – a world-wide leader in multiple branches of biological oceanography and marine ecology – is available to buy at TouchShop.